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The Education System in Guinea-Bissau is guided by laws and policy documents, such as Basic Education Law of 2011 and the Education Sector Plan 20217-2025. These emphasize education as a human right, compulsory and free at the primary level. Despite progress in enrollment, 27% of children remain out of school (MIC 2018-2019), and primary school completion rates are among the lowest globally at 27%, as per the Global partnership for Education (GPE, 2023). Contributing factors include a shortage of qualified teachers, insufficient learning materials, and non-conducive learning environments.

Guinea-Bissau has reaffirmed its commitment to gender equality by ratifying several key international agreements, including the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and its Optional Protocol, both ratified in 2008, as well as the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa. Additionally, the country is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Political Rights of Women and Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security, adopted in 2000.

In the education sector, the MICS6 report from 2018-2019 reveals that gender parity has been achieved in primary education, with a Gender Parity Index (GPI) of 1.00 in both rural and urban areas. However, disparities emerge in the third cycle of education (grades 7-9), where the overall GPI is 0.90, with rural areas maintaining parity at 1.00, while urban areas lag at 0.80. According to the 2022 National Statistics Institute, the adjusted net primary enrollment rate for children aged 6-11 stands at 68.09%, leaving 31.91% out of school. This disparity is more pronounced among girls, particularly in the regions of Oio, Bafatá, and Gabu, where the out-of-school rates for girls reach 40.61%, 40.78%, and 48.24%, respectively. Furthermore, rural areas exhibit lower enrollment rates, with boys at 63.28% and girls at 59.63%. In addition, girls experience schooling in differentiated ways than boys; teaching materials are not consistently gender sensitive, the teaching force is predominately male, and anecdotal evidence suggests that female students in Guinea-Bissau face elevated levels of physical and sexual harassment and violence.

The Global Partnership for Education (GPE) is a partnership and mobilizes and delivers funding to countries most in need of education support to transform their education system. GPE’s goal is to accelerate access, learning outcomes and gender equality through equitable, inclusive, and resilient education systems fit for the 21st century.  Guinea-Bissau’s Partnership Compact has been approved by the GPE in November 2024. Based on the findings of the Enabling Factors Analysis, the partnership compact has articulated the general education sector priority reform as ensuring that all children have access to quality basic education, with an emphasis on all children completing basic education with the necessary basic skills, strengthening the preparation of teachers and the management of the education system. The transformative thrust of this priority reform is on improving access and retention of students and decreasing grade repetition so that all children successfully complete grade 6.  The outcome areas identified in the Compact and endorsed by Local Education Group (LEG) are:

1. Strengthened equity in access, retention and internal effectiveness of students in schools;
2. Improved educational quality by strengthening the pedagogical skills of teachers and improving student assessment;
3. Strengthened governance of the education system at central, regional, school and community levels.

The STG is intended to support the implementation of these priority reforms that the Ministry of Education, Higher Education and Scientific Research (MENESIC) and its development partners have agreed upon, as set out in the Partnership Compact.

MENESIC, with support from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) acting as a Grant Agent (GA) for the STG, is currently developing the grant application and related documents to access Guinea-Bissau’s approved indicative allocation for regular GPE system transformation grant in accordance with the strategic parameters for GPE support

UNICEF is seeking an individual short-term consultant to conduct a rapid gender analysis of the Education Sector that will inform the development of the Global Partnership for Education’s System Transformation (STG) application package for Guinea-Bissau in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Higher Education and Scientific Investigation (MENESIC) and in consultation with the Education partners.

The consultant will work in close collaboration with the technical task team comprised of MENESIC, development partners, Civil Society Organizations, and other key stakeholders.

It is expected that the gender review provides answers and recommendations on:

• The extent to which the education sector strategies address the root causes of demand-side gender-related barriers to education. Do context-specific, targeted and evidence-based strategies to address socio-cultural and financial barriers to quality education for marginalized girls (or boys where they are at a disadvantage) exist? Are these strategies implemented and regularly monitored with a focus on: community mobilization to address discriminatory gendered social norms, including child marriage and gender-based violence; social protection measures, including cash transfers, school feeding, scholarships or stipends?
• The extent to which the education sector plan/policies support gender-transformative environments.  Does the national education sector plan/policies support gender-transformative environments with regard to at least three of the following: (i) gender-responsive (OR TRANSOFRMATIVE) teacher pedagogy and curriculum; (ii) Girl-specific policies such as, for example, sanitation infrastructure and hygiene education including menstrual hygiene management (MHM) or re-entry policies for pregnant girls and adolescent mothers; (iii) policies to prevent and address SRGBV, including bullying, corporal punishment and sexual harassment/abuse (iv) Teacher deployment i.e. improved gender balance among teaching and management staff across levels of education, subject and/or regions;  Sufficient budget is available for the corresponding activities?
• The level of development of national School Related Gender Based Violence (SRGBV) prevention and response mechanisms.  Did holistic mechanisms of prevention and response to SRGBV are established at the national, sub-national and local levels? Did they include at least four of the following: (i) gender analysis to map types of common forms of violence and sites of violence in and around schools; (ii) codes of conduct for teachers and school governance and school-wide monitoring mechanisms; (iii) safe spaces (e.g. girls’ clubs) for peer support, mentoring and co-curricular activities; (iv) functioning school based reporting, response (including counselling support) and multi-sectoral referral systems; (v) curricular approaches to prevent violence and promote gender equality (vi) On-going pre and in-service training of teachers, head teachers and SMC/PTA members on SRGBV and gender-transformative pedagogy?
• To what extent is data from the Education Management Information System (EMIS) disaggregated by gender?
• What are the government incentives for female (or male when relevant) teachers where they are under-represented (specific areas, subjects or levels of education)?
• To what extent does the education sector plan/policies support gender-transformative teaching and learning? Does the national education sector plan/policies support gender-transformative teaching and learning with regard to all of the following: (i) Gender-transformative curricula and/or learning materials; (ii) gender responsive pedagogy; and (iii) reducing gender-based disparities in learning including STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math) subjects. Is their sufficient budget available for the corresponding activities. 
• The extent to which the national education/training policies and plans support the mainstreaming of gender equity in opportunities for skills development. Does the national education/training policy(s) and/or sector plan includes and fully implements at least three of the following: i) policies for gender parity in student enrolment and learning in traditionally gendered vocational training programmes and subjects such as Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM); ii) policies for gender parity in the teacher workforce in vocational training programmes and STEM subjects; iii) curricula and materials for skills development (including skills for learning, personal empowerment, active citizenship and/or employability) programmes that are gender-transformative and explicitly promote gender equality; iv) incentive mechanisms (e.g. scholarships, apprenticeships, cash transfers, etc.) for disadvantaged adolescent girls to access training aiming for formal sector employment (e.g. STEM, business and other formal sector).